The mentor assigned to me by MOE is Mdm Chin, who is a home econs teacher. Even though I don't sit in for any of her lessons (let's face it, I will be of zero use since I have zero home econs knowledge), she always checks on me and she's super nice.

Patrick is my (assigned) math mentor. He manages to niao me (playfully) in class while he's teaching and he always laughs at my -.- face which I throw at him from the back of the class. The students, upon seeing my facial expression, also laughed and joined in the discussion. I love that he always gives me random opportunities in his lessons to teach, for example, go through a few homework questions which the girls are unsure of, or teach a small segment of the lesson. Teaching math is harder than I thought; you don't know what prior knowledge the girls have. As of now they don't even know the inequality sign, so I guess these are small nuances which I have to take note of.

I also taught my first music lesson! More specifically, I taught a small segment of the lesson. The lesson was supposed to be on Music for Weddings. Although the focus of the lesson was on Chinese, Malay and Indian weddings, I wanted to add-on to the lesson by talking about string quartets, introducing by instruments in the string family and performing a piece for the students. Julia (my assigned music mentor) wasn't so sure everything could fit into the lesson but she was very willing to try and gave me the opportunity to see if it could work. I gave her the piano score and we only rehearsed the day before I was supposed to teach but everything really turned out okay. For the first time the students were really attentive while I was teaching and  it was probably because they were more excited to hear me play but whatever works, right?

I always wanted my music teachers to perform and be role models for me to emulate but I have never seen any of my music teachers do so. This made me want to turn the tables around and perform for my students so that lessons for them isn't just about reading the slides and filling up worksheets, but also having fun and having something to look forward to each week.

The thing that makes me so motivated to make each time I teach a better experience for me and the students are...the students themselves. My 1D girls have given me really nice comments and how they appreciated the fact that I remembered their nicknames and that I wrote comments and exam tips in their math homework. I didn't think something so small could keep a teacher going and do the extra mile for his or her students.